Bible translations into Hebrew


Bible translations into Hebrew primarily refers to translations of the New Testament of the Christian Bible into the Hebrew language, from the original Koine Greek or an intermediate translation. There is less need to translate the Jewish Tanakh from the original Biblical Hebrew, because it is closely intelligible to Modern Hebrew speakers. There are more translations of the small number of Tanakh passages preserved in the more distantly related biblical Aramaic language. There are also Hebrew translations of Biblical apocrypha.

Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew Bible is almost entirely in Classical Hebrew. However, there are some significant sections in Biblical Aramaic: about a third of the Book of Daniel and several quoted royal letters and edicts in the Book of Ezra. These are written in the same square-script as the Hebrew parts, and many readers of the Bible in Hebrew are sufficiently familiar with Aramaic as not to require translation for them. Nevertheless, numerous Hebrew translations and paraphrases for these Aramaic parts have been written from the Middle Ages to the present day. The medieval commentary of Gersonides on these books, for instance, contains a Hebrew paraphrase of their Aramaic sections which translates them nearly in their entirety. Many modern editions of the Masoretic Text also contain Hebrew translations of these sections as appendices. Such translations may be found for instance in some versions of the Koren edition, in the IDF edition, and in the text published by The Bible Society in Israel. Hebrew translation of biblical Aramaic is also standard fare in numerous multivolume Hebrew commentaries meant for popular audiences, such as those of, Elia Samuele Artom, Moshe Zvi Segal, Da`at Mikra and Olam ha-Tanakh.
Some modern Israeli editions of the Bible have running footnotes rendering more archaic Biblical Hebrew words and phrases into Modern Hebrew. A Christian translation of the Hebrew Bible into Modern Hebrew was completed in 2006 and called "the Testimony" or העדות. Published in four volumes, all volumes are translated into simple, modern Hebrew vocabulary by Shoshan Danielson and edited by Baruch Maoz. The "Ram Bible" began to be published in 2008. Of a planned four volume set, currently the first two, Torah and Early Prophets, are available. These editions include the original text in a parallel column.

Apocrypha

The books of the apocrypha were not preserved in the Jewish tradition. Though the majority of them were originally composed in Hebrew, they have reached us mostly in Greek form, as found in the Septuagint and preserved by the Christian church. A few are extant only in translations from the Greek into other languages, such as Latin, Christian Aramaic, or Ge'ez. In modern times there has been renewed Jewish interest in these books, which has resulted in a few translations into Hebrew. In the 19th century most of the apocrypha was translated by Seckel Isaac Fraenkel in Ketuvim Aharonim, and a few books were translated by other authors. The Hebrew-language website Daʿat, which collects texts related to Jewish education, has published an online version of these public domain Hebrew translations in digital form; the texts have been formatted and slightly modernized.
Two major annotated Hebrew translations of the apocrypha were published in the 20th century. Both editions include commentaries by the editors, both are vowelized, and both of them incorporate parts of the original Hebrew for Ben Sira that were found in the Cairo Geniza and the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Another annotated Hebrew edition of Ben Sira was published by Moshe Zvi Segal in 1953 and subsequently revised; it also takes into account Hebrew copies found in the Cairo Geniza, among the Dead Sea Scrolls, and at Masada. It is current available from the Bialik Institute.
In the early 21st century, the Yad Ben-Zvi Institute in Jerusalem inaugurated a major project of a scholarly publication called Bein Miqra la-Mishnah, whose scope includes new Hebrew translations and in-depth commentaries on apocryphal books. So far Maccabees 1 & 2 have appeared; Maccabees 3 & 4 and Jubilees are in preparation.

New Testament

Polemical rabbinical translations

Quotes of the New Testament in Hebrew occur in polemical or apologetic Hebrew texts from the 6th century CE. Three medieval polemical rabbinical translations of Matthew predate the Hutter Bible. A fourth rabbinical translation, that of Rahabi Ezekiel, 1750, may have been the same text as the "Travancore Hebrew New Testament of Rabbi Ezekiel" bought by Claudius Buchanan in Cochin, and later given to Joseph Frey. An ecumenical approach is seen in Elias Soloweyczyk's Matthew, 1869.

The Hutter Dodecaglott Bible

The New Testament was first translated into Hebrew by Elias Hutter in his Polyglott edition of the New Testament in twelve languages: Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, Latin, German, Bohemian, Italian, Spanish, French, English, Danish and Polish, at Nuremberg, in 1599, 1600, in two volumes.
Some individual books were translated before Hutter's complete New Testament, such as Alfonso de Zamora's Letter to the Hebrews. Carmignac identifies at least 23 translators of the Gospel of Matthew into Hebrew.

Christian translations

As part of the Christian mission to Jews the Greek New Testament has been translated into Hebrew several times since the 19th century. These versions sometimes exist in bilingual editions.
These Christian versions generally use the Hebrew word משיחיים Meshiẖiyyim for Greek Χριστιανοί, Khristianoi in the text in preference to the Talmudic term נוצרים, Notsrim.
The majority of these versions use the Tetragrammaton when citing quotations from the Hebrew Bible, although this does not mean that Hebrew-speaking Christians necessarily pronounce aloud the name as "Yahweh", any more than Hebrew-speaking Jews, and may read as "Adonai" or "HaShem."
Gospels of Matthew
Gospels of Mark
Gospels of Luke
Gospels of John
Hebrew Gospels
New Testament
Acts
Epistles