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Historiography of the
‘Holy Scripture’
We pray to “God the Father”. What is a father? It is someone who puts himself out for his
children and, if necessary, intervenes in an active way. And as God has done in the past, so
will He also in the future. But not unannounced! And that is known as prophecy. The Bible
is the history book par excellence. It is the ‘Magister Historiae’ (teacher of history). The
stories in the Bible were not written down inconsequentially. In addition to a solid historical
core (1) it has especially a religious significance, and the various books – and they are not
few in number! – form an organic whole. And thus ‘The Book’ has become a composition,
a melody. It makes the invisible God visible through His interventions. The opposite is also
true: to take away the historical basis is to remove God. This article discusses a number of
important aspects relative to the way the Bible came into being in the light of the reliability
of the handing down of the text. It should be realised that any uncertain transmission of the
text brings the prophetic content of the Bible into disrepute. The core question is: does God
speak through the Bible or not?
characteristic of the Hebrew script that originally there were no vowels, and thus a sort of
secret script came into being.
It is assumed that the Phoenicians were the first to invent phonetic writing, from which in
succession Aramaic and Greek script came into being. (4) The Phoenician alphabet, as
observed around 1400 BC, consisted of 22 letters, the same number as the Ancient He-
brew script (cf. Ps. 119). And, as is universally agreed, all those symbols were developed
on the basis of the hieroglyphs. But it has in no way been proved that the Phoenicians
may claim the honour to have been the first. In fact, the Exodus occurred at an even ear-
lier date – when the Phhoenicians had not yet entered the scene: in the 15th century BC.
And, as already remarked, script is required in order to be able to write something down.
The Egyptians themselves show, thanks to the name they gave Joseph when he was co-
regent in Egypt, that he was the inventor of the phonetic script. The Dutch Staten trans-
lation of the Bible reads Zafnath Paänéah (Gen. 41:45), with the first letter being a
‘tsadei’. On the basis of Parthey’s Coptic dictionary (5) the name can easily be read and
translated: Caphenath Pahenecha, or “He who reduced script to its basic elements and
succeeded in bringing to light the basis of the sounds”. It is therefore Joseph himself who
turns out to be the Phoenician – the P(a)henech(iër)! And thus the invention of alphabe-
tical script can be dated to the late 18th century BC.
translation and analysis. One cannot simply translate what one wishes, since if different
groups are allowed to work on a text independent of one another they come to more or
less the same conclusions. And thus the Rosetta Stone turns out to contain a call to
resistance. According to a translation by Madame Geneville it reads as follows: “We must
break the chain that ties us to those who exploit us, oppress and humiliate us, so that we
may be reborn and become as we used to be” and also “The sistrum (rattle) moves as a
sign of cursing, with the aim of releasing itself from him who humiliates us.”
In the steadily further circumscription of God’s Word over the course of the centuries, a
process that uncovered many choices of meaning, lies the progressive knowledge of
God’s plan for the world. Thus the Word has been more and more crystallised out. God
must have known this beforehand – not just known but willed. I do not regard this in
general as an impoverishment, though the risk is present here and there. In those cases
where our insight has become too small-minded God’s Spirit will lead the community to
greater understanding – from an unfolding of the text. And the Jewish knowledge of Holy
Scripture too can help us in this. I believe time is ripe to delve further into the mysteries
of the original Hebrew.
Indeed, it so happened, after having published this article, in both 2007 and 2009, that I
came across the interesting work in the US, accomplished by the Chris Tyreman team.
www.thechronicleproject.org They discovered what they call the Self Defined Hebrew
(SDH) system. They started with the premise that the ancient Hebrew is in principle
unrelated to all other languages. In scientific circles Hebrew is believed to have evolved
from other languages. The SDH system denies that possibility, which I agree with. In my
view it is just the opposite: all other (Adamitic) languages, including modern Hebrew,
evolved from the primordial Hebrew. In my article “The Jewish vernacular in Jesus’
time” I explain that God gave Adam a language ‘from above’, which happened a second
time during the Babylonian confusion of languages and again during the Exodus. The
primordial Hebrew and its first linguistic descendents were like Coptic monosyllabic. The
system conceived by the Tyreman team is also monosyllabic. In such a language each
separate syllabe typically expresses several notions, for which we now have different
words. When syllabes combine in a polysyllabic word, they add on without deformation,
contrary to what happens in a flexional language, where related words have conjunctions,
prepositions or otherwise. Because syllabes are ‘roots’, they represent a substantif as well
as an adjective or a verb in the infinitif, the past or present, without changing form. There-
fore, in ancient Hebrew there is no ‘words of wisdom’ but ‘words wisdom’, there is no
‘who is wise?’ but ‘who wise’, there is no ‘I beg you to tell them you’re my sister’ but
‘tell my sister you’. A monosyllabic language is essentially analytic. To really understand
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ancient Hebrew, we have to decompose the words into its parts. We have to turn back in
time, because the natural evolution of a monosyllabic language is towards a polysyllabic
and flexional language. However ‘to turn back’ is easier said than done. I believe the
Tyreman team managed to do that in a convincing manner.
It must be said that they do not pretend to have found ‘a better translation’ of those that
already exist, in particular the King James version, nor do they pretend to have found a
key to all books of the Tenach (the Old Testament). They limit their work to the Torah
(the books written by Moses), which of course is where it all started. The SDH will per-
haps not apply to later books, like Isaiah that was written some 700 years later, since a
language continuously evolves, whether given by God or not. Nonetheless, the SDH can
elucidate questions related to the translation work. In many cases it will provide deeper
insight in what God wants to tell us. We can consider the SDH as a kind of etymological
avenue. The question remains as to the applicable framework of SDH, which at this stage
has not been resolved. The main insight, as I see it, is that the by God given primordial
Hebrew starts from the abstract (or spiritual) and then goes on to the concrete. In this way
too, CREATION was made. As stated in Job 26:7: “God hangs the universe on the Intan-
gible (b’lee mah).” In all other languages a word starts with a concrete object and from
there arrives at an abstact idea, which is just the other way round.
In chapter 2 from the book on the SDH system, written by Chris Tyreman and his team,
and yet to be published at the time of this writing (January 2014), appears the following
section (ch. 2) :
«« There is a word in ancient Hebrew pronounced Nathan. You have probably heard
it as a person’s name. It means ‘to give’. Nothing more, nothing less, and I (Chris
Tyreman) can tell you with certainty from what we found that this is exactly what it
means. Nathan (to give) is rendered by such words as (in the Kal conjugation): “to
add, apply, appoint, ascribe, assign, bestow, bring, bring forth, cast, cause, charge,
come, commit, consider, count, deliver, deliver up, direct, distribute, fasten, frame,
give, give forth, give over, give up, grant, hang, hang up, lay, lay to charge, lay up,
leave, lend, let, let out, lift up, make, O that, occupy, offer, ordain, pay, perform,
place, pour, print, put, put forth, recompense, render, requite, restore, send, send out,
set, set forth, shew, shoot forth, shoot up, strike, suffer, thrust, trade, turn, utter,
would God, yield”. Besides 17 varieties in idiomatic renderings, this adds up to
84! I hope you see my point. This is the latitude that the translators have taken
with words appearing in the Bible. The rules are set up to make sure that you will
translate a word a certain way at a certain time. Yet the rules themselves conflict with
themselves. Rather than go into the glorious details, let us rather end this section by
saying that we quitely closed the books one day and came up with this idea: “How is
it that by the age of five a Hebrew shepherd boy would be fluent in ancient Hebrew,
but those with twenty years study in the Hebrew language in our age, still cannot
come to consensus on the meaning of certain words? Did the Hebrew boy memorize
the rules? Yet he had no problem.” »»
After many futile attempts and some good luck the team deviced a list of the affects
(directional meanings) on the root words of each of the 22 Hebrew letters or glyphs. It
was considered that the two letter root words (two glyphs) were not words at all, for each
glyph carries its own concept. Each glyph of the Hebrew language was not a phonetic
letter after all, but rather a specific symbol, just as the Egyptians hieroglyphs, but with an
essential difference: the complete language consists of only 22 glyphs, which by simple
combinations create any idea that one wishes to convey. This is why there is no punctua-
tion in Hebrew, because the spaces create the breaks. Using these glyphs alone, there are
well over 6,000 glyph sets for meanings, and more can be introduced if required.
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Two glyphs together form the central idea, with any other preceding and following glyphs
adding detail to the initial central idea. If we take the Hebrew ‘n-th-c’, that meanse ‘to tear
up’, the direction changes by exchanging the last glyph. The first two glyphs carry the
idea, and the third carries the movement of the idea, as follows: tear up, tear out, tear
down, tear off, tear asunder and tear away. This reflects a very common pattern in ancient
Hebrew script. The glyphs following a word-concept, or the suffixes, channel the initial
concept to the final concept. One rarely finds a single glyph without another. This is not
because it takes two glyphs to make a word, but it does to make a concept, which gives
enough description in the narrative to convey an understanding. Chris Tyreman explains
that, although at first it will be difficult to know where the two main glyphs are in any set
of glyphs, it becomes – like in any language – easier with exercise. Soon it will be second
nature to see the main concept, and its equivalent in our language. Interestingly enough,
he explains, it is almost impossible to find the wrong meaning within the particular con-
text of a sentence. Remember that each glyph set that was once thought to be a word, is
actually a set of concepts which are grouped to convey a complete thought. Also remem-
ber that Hebrew is a language of movements
or actions (adjectives) not of nouns, or
names with no meaning attached other than
what the word represents, which by reading
a Hebrew dictionary immediately catches the
eye. If you were given the word ‘fish’ in En-
glish, you would understand its application
because you have been taught so. Hebrew,
on the other hand, consists of a description
of the ‘movement’ of the fish, conveying its
typical motion.
Unlike other languages, ancient Hebrew suffered less from the caving in of its base
through the invastion of foreign words. A word from another culture would have no intel-
ligable meaning to one using the Hebrew language. Although sounds can be easily trans-
ferred, the meanings of those sounds would form a gibberish concept. Take for instance
the word ‘bottles’. In ancient Hebrew, the consonants b - t - l - s mean ‘inside’, ‘to make
ordered’, ‘to’, ‘enclosed’, which leads to the meaning: to be secured to, enclosed, or: stop
enclosed. At best this might be a cork. So, in order to have a word for an unknown item, it
is easier to apply the 22 known glyphs than to introduce a completely new term. The
Israeli listener looks for a description, not a name! With this in mind, it becomes obvious
that ancient Hebrew, did not evolve upwards from the surrounding cultures. It shows a lo-
gic construct, unlike any spoken language we have. It is adaptable, yet resistant to change
(at least in its written form). It gives evidence that supports the Jewish claim that the
original Hebrew is not a language created by humans. If anything, it supports the concept
that it is, and was, our mother language, that was subsequently altered in the passage of
time, which pushed the first version out of sight. Yet, because of its inherent logic it could
be revived at any time. The concept discovered by Chris Tyreman and his team is ground-
breaking and stands to reshape the very foundation of our thinking regarding the history
of Man. See also: “The Complete SDH System glyph sets of the prime and two letter
sets” (updated Nov. 14, 2010).
xandrian (i.e. the Septuagint) than with the Judean version. What is remarkable is that the
texts from the Old Testament quoted in the New Testament are always based on the
Septuagint, of which the oldest complete versions date from the 4th century AD. Older
parts are also known – from, among other sources, Qumran. This shows that the Septua-
gint too has been subject to changes. The preference shown by the early Christians outside
Israel for the Septuagint was prompted by the fact that they mostly knew Greek but
scarcely any Hebrew – and, indeed, it is in Greek that the New testament has come down
to us, not necessarily the original language in which all the texts were written down. At
the convention in Jamnia already referred to, held in the year 80, the rabbis rejected the
Septuagint as less reliable (8), but because the quotes in the New Testament are taken
from the Septuagint, I feel free to hold a different opinion. Moreover the discoveries made
at Qumran seem to prove me right. It could well be that the Alexandrian text is closer to
the original text than the Judean – thus the opposite of what the Jamnia convention deci-
ded. It is not difficult to guess why the rabbis rejected the Septuagint. It must have had to
do with the definitive break between Judaism and Christianity. In fact, the Christians had
not taken part in the war against Rome (from 66 to 73) also known as the Great Uprising
(ha-Mered Ha-Gadol), and that was deeply resented. The Jewish tendency at the time was
to gloss over as much as possible every Biblical reference to Christ, and in that they were
hindered by the Septuagint. Why would they not have fiddled with the Septuagint at some
later stage?
The Vulgate is a fine piece of work on the part of Jerome, who is praised as the most lear-
ned of the Latin fathers of the Church. (10) In addition to different Hebrew versions, in-
cluding the Samaritan, he relied heavily on the Septuagint and other Greek translations
such as that done by a convert to Judaism known as Aquila, a pupil of Akiba. (11) Tho-
mas Aquinas (1225-1274), a man with extensive Biblical knowledge, remarkably enough
knew neither Hebrew nor Greek, though he did speak fluent Latin. This gives an impres-
sion of the approach to the Scriptures at the time of the Reformation. But Jerome’s Vul-
gate was not the last word in this matter, for it underwent many changes in later centuries
– which, with the exception of the version of Pope Clement in 1592 came nowhere near
equalling the literary-technical quality of the original Vulgate, which also existed in vari-
ous versions because Jerome made several variant translations, such as a literal as well as
a literary version of the Psalms. Commissioned by Rome in 1977, the Neo Vulgate saw
the light of day, with adjustments made in the light of the Greek and Hebrew texts. It is
satisfactory as reading material, but not as a source text. For that the Clementine version
still stands, having served among other things for the CPDV (Catholic Public Domain
Version of the Sacred Bible). (12) A slightly edited version of the Clementine Vulgate
was introduced in 2009.
In the present discussion it is not a question of the one good translation – such a thing
does not exist and should not be sought after! It is more a question of different translation
traditions all of which have their right to exist, since no single translation – no single
translator – is capable of giving God’s prophetic message. The Clementine Vulgate is
mainly based on that of Jerome, but also on an amazing amount of material that some-
times goes far back in the history of the Church and thus deserves our respect, for the
church fathers had at their disposal documents – such as the Hexapla of Origen – which
were lost long ago.
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The ‘fixation’ of the text (into separate words), and the use of the Masoretic nikkud sys-
tem to indicate vowels and suchlike has caused a great deal of potential meaning to be
lost. There have also been omissions in the text, often just one letter that changes the mea-
ning of the sentence. And thus we may assume that the Jews have, whenever possible,
somewhat hidden from view our Lord and Saviour. An indication of it exists in the follo-
wing verses (Lk 24:44-47):
«« Jesus Christ said unto them: “These are the words which I spake unto you, while
I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of
Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning Me.” Then opened He
their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures. And said unto them:
“Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead
the third day, that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name
among all nations.” »»
The remarkable thing about this passage is that what “was written” cannot be found back
in the Old Testament. That means that the manuscripts of the Old Testament from Jesus’
time must have differed from the later copies that have served for our Bible translations.
As already said, the Qumran scrolls are revealing in that respect. The famous Isaiah scroll
from Qumran is clear enough. (13) But there is still another although theoretical option. If
we take 1 Chronicles 1:1, the verse starts with a number of names: “Adam, Seth, Enosh,
Kenan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Mehuselah, Lamech, Noah.” If we translate it as a nor-
mal text from Hebrew, as if there were no names, we get: “Man (is) appointed mortal
sorrow; (but) the blessed God shall come down to teach (that) His death shall bring rest
to (the) desperate.” Here is a summary of God’s plan of redemption, deeply hidden in the
genealogical list of the book Chronicles. And no doubt similar examples exist elsewhere.
In general the divisions applied to the text are a good thing since it prevents a wildly
conjectural intrepretation, something that from time immemorial was excluded in Judaism
because too free an interpretation of the Scriptures was prevented by the authorities – and
still is. Jewish scriptural scholars supported the 16th-century reformers in their efforts to
translate the Bible from Hebrew. A delegation of rabbis, in Geneva strongly advised them
to respect the divisions that had been made by the Jews in the text as also the punctuation
that was applied to the Bible version of the middle of the 10th century, otherwise the con-
sequences would be disastrous, so the argument went. Wisely they kept to the advice.
authoritative and complete was partial and progressive, like the formalizing of
doctrine, and the settling of ecclesiastical order.
The record of divine Revelation when committed to human care is not - at least
apparently - exempted from the accidents and caprices which affect the transmission
of ordinary books. It is not easy to overrate the difficulties which beset any inquiry
into the early Versions of the New Testament. In addition to those which impede
all critical investigations into the original Greek text, there are others in this case
scarcely less serious, which arise from comparatively scanty materials and vague
or conflicting traditions. There is little illustrative literature; or, if there be more, it
is imperfectly known. There is no long line of Fathers to witness to the completion
and the use of the translations. And though it be true that these hindrances are chiefly
felt when the attempt is made to settle or interpret their text, they are no less real
and perplexing when we seek only to investigate their origin and earliest form. The
teaching of God through man appears to be subject to the vagaries of human life and
thought. Years must elapse before we can feel that the words of one who talks with
men are indeed the words of God. The successors of the Apostles did not recognise
that the written histories of the Lord and the scattered epistles of His first disciples
would form a sure and sufficient source and test of doctrine for later times when the
tradition would have grown indistinct or corrupt. Conscious of a life in the Christian
body, and realising the power of its Head, they did not feel that the Apostles were
providentially charged to express once for all in their writings the essential forms
of Christianity, in like manner as the Prophets that had foreshadowed them. »»
A warning note is called for here. The modern practice with new Bible translations of
bringing forward variants that have long been rejected and presenting them as scientific is
a very suspicious practice and throws up a smoke curtain for those who have not been
able to go into this material in depth. In order not to fall prey to such things I prefer the
older translations like the King James or New King James Version (NKJV), and the
excellent version by Abbé Crampon (first editions early 20th century). With regard to the
reliability of the texts that have come down to us F. F. Bruce writes in “The New Testa-
ment Documents” (1972):
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When we fix our attention on the fragments we possess, the oldest of them turn out to be
dated within the first decades after the Crucifixion, like that of Mark 6:52-53, found at
Qumran and therefore no older than 68 AD. (15) This is probably the oldest extant frag-
ment of the New Testament. And it definitively puts paid to the fable that the Gospels
came into being in the late first or early second century as a literary explosion of folkloric
popular imagination.
Together with Fenton Hort, Bishop Westcott used the different traditions and a multipli-
city of texts as basis for a magisterial piece of work in revising the basic text of the New
Testament, a task they carried out in fear and trembling. Their text serves at present as one
of the standard works for translators of the New Testament, offering an alternative rea-
ding in a few dubious cases. (16) A good translation of the Bible, such as the NKJV, al-
ways provides the alternative in a footnote. Anyone wishing to deviate from the Westcott
& Hort basic text must have good reasons for doing so, but generally any such deviation
leads to a botched job served up with a sauce of scientific scholarship. Thanks to Westcott
& Hort we now have a text that scarcely deviates from the original. God watches over His
Word. That is obvious. And He owes it to Himself to do so.
Finally it can be said that the Bible is, from cover to cover, true, justified, authentic and
infallible.
Hubert Luns
Notes
(1) The fact that the Bible has a solid historical core does not justify wild speculations.
Thus Genesis, for instance, gives a ‘thematic review’ of how Creation came into being. This
does not justify seeing the six days of creation as six times twenty-four hours.
(2) The Samaritan sect still exists and has its own synagogue in Nablus, formerly known
as Sichem. The sect has about 750 followers at present (in the year 2009) and they have
good contacts with the Orthodox Jews. It was not always so!
(3) The Biblical Sinai lies elsewhere (cf. Ex. 3:1, 17:6 and Gal. 4:25) and is not the region
now known as Sinai. The Sinai now was formely called Paran (cf. Num. 13:3, 26).
(4) According to Herodotus it was Cadmos the Phoenician who introduced the alphabet
to Greece, but that does not mean to say that he was its inventor.
(8) At the moment there is a great deal of interest shown by the Jewish side in restoring
the Septuagint to its original form, which apparently is not an impossibility.
Pontiff in the name of the Council, that he should correct as far as possible first a
Latin, and subsequently also a Greek and a Hebrew edition, which eventually would
be published for the benefit of the Holy Church of God. If this desire could not then
be fully realized owing to the difficulties of the times and other obstacles, at present
it can, we earnestly hope, be more perfectly and entirely fulfilled by the united
efforts of Catholic scholars. And if the Tridentine Synod wished “that all should use
as authentic” the Vulgate Latin version, this, as all know, applies only to the Latin
Church and to the public use of the same Scriptures; nor does it, doubtless, in any
way diminish the authority and value of the source texts. For there was no question
then of these texts, but of the Latin versions, which were in circulation at that time,
and of these the same Council rightly declared to be preferable that which “had been
approved by its long-continued use for so many centuries in the Church.” Hence this
special authority or as they say, authenticity of the Vulgate was not affirmed by the
Council particularly for critical reasons, but rather because of its legitimate use in
the Churches throughout so many centuries; by which use indeed the same is shown,
in the sense in which the Church has understood and understands it, to be free from
any error whatsoever in matters of faith and morals; so that, as the Church herself
testifies and affirms, it may be quoted safely and without fear of error in disputations,
in lectures and in preaching; and so its authenticity is not specified primarily as
critical, but rather as ‘juridical’. »» (§§ 14-15, 20-21)
(11) Aquila’s translation is from the first half of the 2nd century AD and is sometimes so
literal that the Greek is incomprehensible for those not versed in Hebrew. It was, in fact,
destined for the Jewish Diaspora. His translation has come down to us in bits and pieces.
(12) See www.sacredbible.org for the Catholic Public Domain Version of the Sacred Bible.
(13) “Isaiah’s Exalted Servant in the Great Isaiah Scroll” by Steven P. Lancaster and James
M. Monson – Messiah Journal, a teaching journal by First Fruits of Zion, Rockford Illinois
# spring 2011/5771 (Special Supplement, issue 107).
(14) The quotation is taken from the seventh and last revised reprint from 1896 of “A
General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament” (pp. 4-5, 12, 56, 238,
508, 511), first edition 1855.
(15) See Carsten Peter Thiede: “7Q5 – Facts or Fiction?” - The Westminster Theological
Journal 57 # 1995 (pp. 471-74).
(16) This is a reference to the 1881 version of “Revision of the Original Greek of the New
Testament”, as also: “Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek: with notes
on selected readings”.