B"H

The Translation of the Hebrew Bible into the Greek Septuagint - Some Aspects of Torah That Are Untranslatable and Were Wholly Misunderstood in the Xian Tradition

The Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek from a version of the
Hebrew Bible that is called the Vorlage. The Vorlage is a non-normative version of the Hebrew Bible which early on was put into
disuse for learning purposes. We use the Masoretic text. Some copies
of the Vorlage were found among the scrolls at the Dead Sea. However,
they were few and far between. The vast majority of Torah scrolls
found at Qumran are the Masoretic Text, which we use to this day.
This proves that then, as now, the Masoretic text was the one
generally accepted as the true Text of the Hebrew Bible. The reason
why copies of the Vorlage survived is because it contains the Names
of God, and therefore the scrolls could not be destroyed. The vast
majority were versions of the Masoretic text. The Vorlage was used as the basis of the Greek 'translation' because it was not our desire to
even attempt to translate the true Text. Hebrew cannot be translated
into any other language because it contains within it secrets that
cannot be rendered into any other language. Therefore, the text
which served as the basis of the Greek translation of the Bible was a
corrupted text. Of course, all translations used after the
translation of the Vorlage into Greek are translations of the corrupt translation, bringing the reader further and further afield with each
successive translation.

Let's begin at the beginning. There is no beginning in the Hebrew
Torah. One of the basic rules of Torah interpretation is that there
is no fore and there is no aft. Not only is there no fore and no aft,
we Jews read the Hebrew Torah divided into 52 portions for each of
the weeks of the year. On the self-same week that we read "the end"
of the Torah, we also return to reading "the beginning". We read the
Torah as a continuous circle. One might assume that we read the end-
beginning of the Torah at either the end or the beginning of the
year. We don't. Therefore, there is no first sentence of the Torah
which reads: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth."

The God of Israel does not create anything, or do anything else for
that matter. God is That which enables, allows, wills creation to
take place. It is the mind which creates, by the Will of God, but it
not God Who creates.

As to God being a he. To say this would constitute idol worship to
the Jews. God has no characteristics whatsoever. The Hebrew word hu
means the English "he", but it also means "it" in the singular
masculine. However, this same word can be punctuated to read as the
Hebrew word hee, which means "she" or "it" in the feminine singular.
This appears quite often in the Hebrew Bible. God is also addressed
in the feminine in a number of Hebrew prayers. God is often addressed
in the masculine and feminine singular within the same prayer. This
does not mean that the God of Israel is either masculine or feminine,
it refers to the fact that God takes on forms which act on in
creation (the masculine) and forms which are acted upon in creation
(the feminine).

As for God not speaking: Well, the Prophet Eliyahu (Elijah) speaks of
the small, still voice and his testimony is good enough for me. Not
only that, the Hebrew word for desert is midbar, the Hebrew word for
speaks is medaber in the masculine singular. The two words are
spelled with exactly the same consonants. Without vowels they are
written identically. That being the case, when we "wander in the
desert" we were actually walking through God's speaking with us.

This will bring me to my last point: The God of Israel is understood
to be both transcendent and immanent. As is written: There is nothing
which is not filled with God, yet nothing can contain It. God is the
ultimate paradox: It is what It is, is what It is not, is and is
not. It does not exist in and of Itself at all, but all of existence
are manifestations of It. God knows Itself and is ignorant of
Itself, knows everything, but is learning.

Although everyone is certainly entitled to their beliefs, there are
many misunderstandings in Christianity because it is an adaptation of
our faith, which no one but us has ever understood and is based on a
non-normative version of the impossible to translate Hebrew Torah. I
will try to be as gentle as I can when correcting blaring and glaring
errors. It is however, part of what I must do to bring these errors
to light, in light of what I know, and correct these errors
publicly. I hope you will understand when I must do so.

With blessings,
Doreen Ellen Bell-Dotan, Tzfat