Sweeping Changes In New English Torah

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29952, 13 October 1962, Page 11

Sweeping Changes In New English Torah

(NZ.P.A-Reuter—Copyright)

PHILADELPHIA, October 12 A group of Jewish Bible scholars has completed work on a new English translation of the Jewish Blbl • which amends the text of one of the Ten Commandments, among many other sweeping changes. The new version, the first translation into modern English from the ancient Hebrew text of the “Torah, the Five Books of Moses,’’ will be published next January 28. by the Jewish Publication Society of America. It makes the Third Commandment prohibit perjury, not vain use of God’s name, virtually eliminates the word “soul,” gives an entirely new meaning to the phrase “with all my heart,” and has Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt through the parted waters of the Sea of Reeds, not the Red Sea.

The new version of what is the basis of the Christian Old Testament even has a new beginning. The first words of the Book of Genesis —traditionally "In the beginning God created the heaven and earth"—now become: “When God began to create the heaven and the earth-” A committee of Bible scholars, with Dr. Harry M. Orlinsky as editor-in-chief, worked for eight yean on the new translation, taking advantage of new archaeological discoveries in the Holy Land. The new version gives the expression “with all my heart” a meaning which implies agreement, not the previously-held concept of loyalty or devotion. The Sea of Reeds, the new route of the Israelites' miraculous escape from the Egyptians through parted waters, is a marshy area near the Red Sea. not far from the Sues Canal.