ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 2, 1996 TAG: 9603040005
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEWTON, MASS.
SOURCE: ROBIN ESTRIN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Twenty-seven years ago, while an undergraduate Judaic studies major at Brandeis University, Everett Fox happened upon a copy of the Bible that would change his life. It was a German translation by Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig from Hebrew manuscripts, and it awakened Fox to the Bible's ``richness.'' ``It was like hearing a performance of something that you know well but is so different it forces you to go back to the original and re-evaluate,'' he said.
He decided to try translating one of his own favorite passages from Hebrew into English - Genesis 22, where God commands Abraham to offer up his son. The attempt took a few days; he didn't realize it would evolve into a life's work.
Fox, 48 and a professor of Judaic studies at Clark University in Worcester, recently published an English translation of "The Five Books of Moses" - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deutoronomy - with more than 1,000 pages of verse and annotations that challenge the reader to set aside traditional biblical scholarship and examine the text anew. ``It will change your view of what the Bible is and how it sounds,'' Fox said.
Where some other translations focus on making the Bible an easily readable work by demystifying the original text, Fox relishes the innate difficulties of the Hebrew words. His literal translation, he said, ushers the reader toward what he calls the ``riches and ambiguities'' in the words by couching the Hebraic voice in ``English dress.''
Some things will surprise even the casual Bible reader. In the King James Version, Genesis opens: ``In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void.'' In Fox's version, it's ``At the beginning of God's creating of the heavens and the earth when the earth was wild and waste....''
Fox said his text attempts to bring out the puns and rhythms of the ancient words. ``I wanted to give the reader some of the experience of reading the Hebrew,'' said Fox, who grew up in a traditional Jewish home.
To maintain the true flavor, Fox sticks to the Hebrew names: Abraham is Avraham, Isaac is Yitzhak and Jacob is Yaakov. There is no Adam; he is called ``human''; in Hebrew, ``adam'' means ``humankind.''
Fox said he chose to call him human not because he wanted a politically correct text, but because he wanted to stay true to the Hebrew. In Fox's text, the name of God becomes YHWH, what he says is the closest equivalent to the Hebrew word. Ancient Jews wouldn't pronounce the personal name of God, using instead ``Adonai,'' which means ``the Lord.'' Fox suggests replacing YHWH - which would sound like ``Yahweh'' if spoken - with ``the Lord'' when reading aloud.
Some scholars have questioned whether readers will be willing to put up with the difficulties of his translation, published by Schocken Books. And others have criticized Fox for obscuring the text.
Fox admits his translation will be challenging for some. But the Bible, he said, was never meant to be an easy read. ``The Bible is a very complex set of books...,'' he said. ``It's not bedtime reading.''
Peter Machinist, a professor of Hebrew at Harvard University, said Fox has done a good job capturing the flavor of the original language. ``It gives people a sense of what the Bible sounds like,'' he said. But, he noted, the result is something that's ``not quite normal English and not normal Hebrew.''
Fox said he was conscious of that, and tried not to make the English sound too odd. At times he made concessions as he thought about ``the poor reader out there.''
But other times, he went with his instincts, even if the English doesn't quite work. To maintain the rhythm of the Hebrew, for example, ``Thou shalt not commit adultery,'' becomes ``You are not to adulter'' - even though adulter is not a word in English.
LENGTH: Medium: 73 linesby CNB