Is there a (traditional) catholic bible in hebrew?

[Catholig]

I wanted to attempt to learn hebrew, and read the bible in that language (along with Latin of course ), however I’d prefer something besides a translation of the NAB into hebrew. Something pretty traditional, and definitely catholic. Can anyone help me out?

Catholig

 

[TheOneTrueFred]

Apparently the Council of Trent asked that official versions of the Hebrew & Greek be prepared, but it looks like everyone lost interest after the Clementine Vulgate was finalized. 500 years later, still no official Hebrew text for the Church

 

[Contarini]

I wanted to attempt to learn hebrew, and read the bible in that language (along with Latin of course ), however I’d prefer something besides a translation of the NAB into hebrew. Something pretty traditional, and definitely catholic. Can anyone help me out?

I presume you are talking about the New Testament? For the OT there is the Masoretic text and that’s pretty much it, although as a Catholic you should also pay attention to the Greek Septuagint.

Rest easy–I’m sure no one has thought to translate the NAB into Hebrew! I have a Hebrew New Testament and frankly have no use for it (it will take me my whole life, at the rate I’m going, to read the OT in Hebrew–I’m still not out of Genesis!). It was produced by some evangelicals for use in the conversion of Jews, I believe. I don’t know how accurate it is.

Edwin

 

[Catholig]

I presume you are talking about the New Testament? For the OT there is the Masoretic text and that’s pretty much it, although as a Catholic you should also pay attention to the Greek Septuagint.

Rest easy–I’m sure no one has thought to translate the NAB into Hebrew! I have a Hebrew New Testament and frankly have no use for it (it will take me my whole life, at the rate I’m going, to read the OT in Hebrew–I’m still not out of Genesis!). It was produced by some evangelicals for use in the conversion of Jews, I believe. I don’t know how accurate it is.

Edwin

Edwin, I was basically thinking of the Old Testament. And I was kind of thinking about the Manuscripts used by St. Jerome in his translation - not the Septuagint.

Catholig

 

[AharonSebastian]

I have a Hebrew bible that I was given as a gift, but I have recently found out that it is lacking in the book of Sirach, even though it has Macabees. Because of this I was wondering the same question as the original poster of this forum, as well as I’d like to try to get my hands on a Greek one, and even Japanese for my own learning interests.

 

[sirach2v4]

I wanted to attempt to learn hebrew, and read the bible in that language (along with Latin of course ), however I’d prefer something besides a translation of the NAB into hebrew. Something pretty traditional, and definitely catholic. Can anyone help me out?

Catholig

You might want a Jewish Bible (Tanakh), Hebrew/English, perhaps from artscroll.com or from the Jewish Publication Society. www.jps.com

This would be PRETTY traditional, partner.

Your title question is a philosophical bowl of spaghetti. Well,maybe… Maybe there’s a “New American Bible” in Hebrew, but I can’t imagine anybody In Israel who would buy it. Who would want such a thing. Who would bother to write it? Who would want a Bible that was a Hebrew version that had been translated from English,which itself had been translated from the original Hebrew?

Do you have that much faith, that the Catholic Church could re-write the original Hebrew? This is not totally far-fetched. At Qumran, in the “Dead Sea Scrolls” there was manuscript which seemed to be an attempt to rewrite Genesis, taking out some of the problems.

 

[aragonsr]

They don’t exist anymore. The oldest OT books we have are the Septuagint, which was written in Greek in Alexandria Egypt because Hebrew was dying out (or so they thought) because of the babylonian and assyrian exile, which caused some of them to flee to different areas. Because they were spread out, they were “assimilated” into the Greek culture (Early Roman empire spoke mostly Greek, which covered Alexandria).

The Septuagint is even used to correct the oldest Hebrew versions that we do have. The oldest Hebrew OT texts that we have date back to around 600 A.D. I believe, whereas the Septuagint dates back to 250 A.D., even though it was first penned around 250 B.C.

Even St. Jerome complained about not having the original Hebrew texts, which is why he had to use the Greek versions for parts of the Vulgate (around 400 A.D. I think, which is when the canon was officially closed by the RCC).

We know that the Septuagint was used in and around Palestine during the time of Jesus and was widely accepted among Jews (still used among ethiopian Jews today). Only after Christianity became big did the Jews reject that canon (around 90 A.D. some estimate), even though it wasn’t really a canon then. This was because Christians had constant recourse to it and the Jews wanted the old Hebrew texts back, which they had back then. The rejected books were, of course, books written B.C., Jewish OT books, such as Maccabees.

On the other hand, the Dead Sea Scrolls (Discovered in 1960’s in caves near Qumran near the dead sea) do provide us with some Hebrew and Aramaic texts, but they are somewhat sparse (I saw a bunch of psalm stuff). Interestingly enough, the dead sea scrolls do contain some of the books that the modern Jews removed and the non-Catholics removed (because they believed that the Jews still had authority over scripture), but which Catholics still keep in their bibles today because the RCC said they are good and true, and they have that authority now, because it was transferred by Jesus.

This is what I remember, but I could be incorrect on some details.