Reading the Hebrew Scriptures
It’s not easy to read scriptures that were first recorded over 2,000 years ago.
First of all, the Hebrew Scriptures (which also includes a few sections in Aramaic)—as the name implies—weren’t written in English. English is a translation. Like all translations, our English translations don’t necessary capture all the essence and meaning in the original—which helps to explain why we have so many different English translations.
Secondly, we actually don’t have any single complete, original source of the Hebrew Scriptures. There were no printing presses or photocopy machines. Every copy of the Hebrew Scriptures that we have until about 500 years ago was manually copied by hand. In this process, and no matter how careful these “scribes” were, errors were introduced in the copying. Further errors could be introduced in copying these copies.
Thirdly, we don’t actually have even a single very “old” copy of the Hebrew Scriptures. The oldest copy we have is known as the Leningrad Codex. It dates from 1008 CE, so about 1500 years after the Hebrew Scriptures were first compiled. Apart from this we have literally thousands of shards, pieces of papyri, and parchments containing various passages and parts of passages but few large manuscripts are older than the 13th century CE.
Fourthly, we don’t have a good sense of what life or faith was like for people who lived thousands of years ago. We often approach knowledge from a scientific or historical perspective. Spiritual writers from the past don’t share our same sense of storytelling. They didn’t have our same understanding of science or the world (for example thinking that the Earth goes around the Sun and not the other way around). They didn’t necessarily care that they got the date or time right on an event. They were trying to make a point about their faith.
Lastly, scripture like all literature is used in a particular setting or place. If I was to start a story with, “One upon a time…” you would probably correctly assume that I was going to tell a fairy tale. It wouldn’t be an actual historic event. It would be told to entertain (mostly) children, and it would likely end in everyone living, “happily ever after.” But someone came from a culture where no one ever told made up stories to kids, they would have no idea how to interpret a fairy tale. The same is true when we try to read similitudes, myths, parables, laments, hymns of praise, and and other literary forms in scripture.
Fortunately for us, there are a number of critical tools we can use to more properly understand scripture. We’ll get to these in just a few minutes.