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Friday May 2, 2003

Torah is meant to be read

all, not just by the religious elite

Kedoshim

Leviticus 19:1-20:27

Isaiah 66:1-24

"Speak to the whole congregation of Israel and say to them: 'You shall be holy; for I, the Lord your God, am Holy'" (Leviticus 19:2).

The opening words of Kedoshim suggest the importance of complete access to the word of God. This is but one of a number of places in which the entire congregation gathered to hear the reading of the Law. Exodus (24:7) notes, "Moses took the record of the covenant and read it aloud to all the people." Deuteronomy (31:12) stipulates, "Gather the people -- men, women, children, and the strangers in your communities -- that they may hear and so learn to revere the Lord your God and to observe faithfully every word of this Teaching."

The Book of Nehemiah (8:3) describes one such convocation: "Ezra the priest brought the Teaching before the congregation, men and women and all who could listen with understanding. He read from it...from the first light until midday, to the men and the women and those who could understand."

The Talmud ascribes the origin of this tradition to earlier days of Israel's desert wandering: "They went three days in the wilderness, and found no water" (Exodus 15:22). Because water is a metaphor for Torah, this comment was interpreted to mean that they went three days without hearing Torah. Thus, the rabbis utilized this text to establish the tradition of reading the Torah, not only on Shabbat, but also on Monday and Thursday, so that the "Israelites would never go for three consecutive days without hearing the Law" (Baba Kama 82a).

These texts demonstrate that the Law is not the private province of priests or rabbis, but rather the possession of all the people. However, this became more difficult when large numbers of individuals no longer understood Hebrew, making the Bible an inaccessible document that forced people to depend on rabbis for translation and interpretation.

To remedy this situation, a proposal to translate the Bible from Hebrew into Greek to satisfy the linguistic needs of diaspora Jews in Alexandria created a controversy; some reasoned that if God had intended the Bible to be written in a foreign language, God would have done so. Nevertheless, based upon the biblical tradition that 70 elders accompanied Moses up Mount Sinai (Exodus 24:1, 9), legend records that 70 scholars were invited to independently translate the Bible, resulting in a translation called the Septuagint. The impressive result of 70 supposedly identical translations was taken as proof that God approved this effort.

In the ancient Christian community, Jerome faced a similar need that resulted in the Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin at the end of the fourth century C.E. But that translation of the Bible into Latin ultimately became the private domain of an exclusive fraternity of priests, monks and scholars, since most common folk could neither read nor write, let alone understand Latin. However, the invention of the printing press began a democratization process that disseminated information more widely, making it more difficult to control ownership of the sacred word.

The greatest Christian translator of the Bible into English was William Tyndale. Many of his translations, which included such phrases as "Let there be light" or "Thou shalt Love thy neighbor as thyself," became standards for reading the Bible in English.

Because England was an inhospitable environment for Bible translation, Tyndale went first to Hamburg in 1524 and then to Wittenberg, where he developed a close friendship with Martin Luther. Later, when his "heretical" translation of Scriptures into the "vulgar tongue" was reported to the authorities, he fled to Cologne and completed his translation there. Upon publication, 3,000 copies were secretly shipped to England, where they were eagerly purchased by the people to be read and by Archbishop Warham to be burned. Of the 3,000 copies originally printed, only two survive.

Tyndale was burned at the stake; his dying words were, "Lord, open the King of England's eyes." Ironically, his work created such a desire and demand for the Bible in the vernacular that, at the time of his death, church and state were already moving toward the admission that there was a need for a legal translation.

The vitriol that the translation of the Bible into German caused was comparable to the events that took place in England. One of Luther's most powerful arguments for the Reformation was that the Catholic Church, by preventing a translation into the German, controlled all religious adherents through a Bible available only in Latin. Thus, Luther's 1534 translation was one of his first rebellious acts in breaking with the Roman Church. It also met with great acclaim.

There are strong traditions in the Jewish and Christian communities to make the holy writ available to the masses. Kedoshim teaches that Torah is not an exclusive province of a privileged few; rather, it is the property of "the whole congregation," which is required to read or listen to its words. More than a requirement, it is a responsibility that no Jew should take lightly!

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