THE chief concern of this study is theological. What is the faith, what is the message of the Bible in the area of our investigation? What is the biblical teaching and testimony about God? We believe that one may dispense with the methods of higher criticism to establish the faith and the message. No matter what one’s opinion may be regarding the literary sources of the Bible, it would be sheer irresponsibility to maintain that the biblical text represents an accidental and haphazard conglomeration of pieces of writings without much unity and consistency between the various parts. It may be well worthwhile recalling some pertinent words by N. H. Snaith in The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (London, 1955):
The literary criticism (Higher Criticism) of the Old Testament has often forgotten that those who pieced the Old Testament together, pieced it together as we have it now. They chose the order we have. The analysis of the sources is but the first step in literary criticism. The editors had the final say, and they used all the material from its varied sources in order to teach their particular message. This message, that of Scripture as a whole, can never be found so long as we think of the Bible only with respect to its literary sources. (p. 89)
Snaith’s insight has been anticipated by several decades by Rosenzweig and Buber in their significant translation of the Bible into German. About one aspect of their joint endeavor Franz Rosenzweig wrote that for them the “R,” which for German higher criticism stands for Redakteur, had the inspiring meaning of the Hebrew Rabbenu, our teacher. Indeed, he who does not find the teacher and master in the Bible has no Bible. No matter what the literary origins, Rabbenu had the final say. The final say of Rabbenu, or of the “Editors,” is the Bible. It establishes the intrinsic unity of the message and the teaching.
The theological and religious interest in the Bible is not concerned with history or literature but exclusively with the faith and the testimony of Rabbenu. But this can only be established if one is able to discover the unity and consistency implanted by Rabbenu. His inspiration, his faith, his testimony make the Bible one. To find this oneness of the message, “the message of the Scripture as a whole,” is the theological and religious concern.
Who is Rabbenu? For many, and this author is among them, he is the prophets and teachers who, under divine inspiration, proclaimed the message and the teaching. Others may have different opinions. The theological and religious concern is with the wholeness of the testimony, no matter whether such wholeness is the work of the “Editors” or of “Moshe Rabbenu.”
While this author believes in the theological unity of the Bible, he did not go out to prove it. In fact, he did not go out to prove anything. He let the Bible speak to him, but in its entirety and wholeness. He found a surprising consistency in the usage of the basic ideas which he has investigated.
What has impressed him most painfully has been the realization that all translations have been misrepresentations of essential biblical teaching. Who is not familiar with the phrase, “the Lord He is our God”? The words have been responsible for a great deal of misunderstanding about the biblical teaching regarding God. We have shown that the expression occurs nowhere in the Hebrew Bible. “Y He is our Elohim” has specific biblical meaning which is completely lost in the translation. Similarly, ideas like mishpat, emeth, emunah, sedeq, etc. have their unique biblical significance. The accepted translations are, in fact, misrepresentations.
In our analysis we have had to contend with the difficulty that often, in discussing one term, we could not anticipate the results of the discussions of other terms which also occur in the same context. In such cases we either let the old translation stand, even though it had to be later rejected, or let the not-yet analyzed Hebrew concepts stand in the original.
The tetragrammaton as well as the term Elohim caused a problem of translation of their own. We have resolved it by letting the Hebrew stand wherever an appreciation of the original was necessary for the understanding of an idea or a passage. Otherwise, we followed the not very satisfactory habit of translating the words as “the Lord, God.” We abbreviate the tetragrammaton with Y, which corresponds to the Hebrew Yod, rather than with the customary I.
Our study is based entirely on the Masoretic text. The English translation we use is in general the Jewish Publication Society edition of 1916 and, occasionally, the Revised Version. Where we depart from these translations, as is often the case, we usually indicate our reasons for our disagreement.
For technical reasons it was impossible to employ any of the usual methods for the transliteration of Hebrew words. Wherever practical the transliteration was put on a phonetic basis without seeking or achieving complete consistency.
Since our interest is completely theological, there was no need for us to follow the division of the books of the Bible as has become customary among Bible scholars whose main interest is literary and historical.
E.B.