JET Introduction
From Open Siddur Project Development Wiki
Introduction to JET
JET stands for The Jewish English Torah or The Jewish English Tanakh. JET is a collaborative project to produce a Jewish Bible translation in modern English under an Open Content license. The translation is meant to be readable (and enjoyable to read), useful to people who want to study the weekly parashah, and faithful to the Hebrew text of the Torah.
Translations of parts of the Torah or Tanakh with the "JET" prefix should be prepared following the guidelines described in this introduction. For an example of JET's format and style to follow, see Parashat Bereshit. Other kinds of translations are also welcome of course, but they should use an alternative form for their titles.
History and Status
The JET project began during the week of Simḥat Torah 5772 (2011) with the publication of Parashat Bereshit by User:JET, who also wrote the initial version of this introduction. That initial version also appeared as the first announcement of JET at the The Open Siddur Project website.
Parashat Bereshit is currently the only example of JET.
An initial example
The initial translation of Parashat Bereshit is meant as a sample and as an example. The JET project does not envision any one person translating the entire Torah alone (let alone the whole Tanakh). Rather, this translation of the first portion of the Torah is meant to serve as a model in order to encourage others to create their own modern translations of the Torah/Tanakh (parts of it or all of it), so that the Open Siddur Project can become the host for a collaborative effort to create new Tanakh translations under free licenses that anyone can use freely.
In order to further that goal, what follows is a description of how the translation of Parashat Bereshit was done and the rationale behind the method, so that others can either adopt the same method or change it according to their personal needs and tastes.
There is no one particular style of translation that is right for everyone, but in a collaborative Open Content environment such as the Open Siddur Project there is also no problem creating alternatives and adaptations. The JET methodology is just one example of a particular way it can be done. Others are free to modify and improve it as they see fit.
Other translations as sources
First I must begin by saying that I didn't write this translation from scratch. I wanted a translation that, while in modern English, was still firmly within the literary tradition of high-quality English Bible translations, specifically the tradition that began with King James Version (KJV), and continued to be adapted in the 19th and 20th centuries with the American Standard Version (ASV), the Revised Standard Version (RSV), and the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV).
For Jews whose healthy instinct is to react negatively to the names of all these mostly Christian “versions” (though the NRSV also included some Jewish scholars), I ask you to consider two points: First, “accept the truth from whoever tells it” (Maimonides, preface to the Eight Chapters). We are not talking about the truth of Torah here, but about how to render that truth tastefully in English. The English-speaking Christian world has accumulated vast expertise in this area over the course of centuries. We should make use of that expertise.
Second, it is important to realize how dependent Anglo-Jewish translations have always been on this English literary tradition. The JPS 1917 version, which is currently being edited and made freely available here at the Open Siddur Project, was based heavily on the KJV. The new JPS version, while far more original, still fits squarely into the same literary genre and openly draws upon its style. And even Orthodox translations such as Artscroll draw heavily on these classic Jewish and non-Jewish translations (though they rarely acknowledge it).
So as raw material, I used an existing translation into modern English rather than starting from scratch, one that is itself based upon this literary tradition and has been released into the public domain. The translation I used, called the World English Bible, is a basically good one (though very far from perfect). Even though it is mostly the work of a single person, it still competes surprisingly well with other similar translations that were prepared by accredited committees. It is not much different from them, and it is not significantly better or worse than them.
The WEB is very much a Christian translation in its style, in its frequent Christological interpretations, and in its preference for the Greek text in certain places (though it usually reflects the Hebrew), and as such it is quite unsuitable for Jewish use in its current form. However, as raw material for a new translation it is very useful. I have posted my personal thoughts about this translation and its author at my user page, in an essay entitled "Jewish Musings about the World English Bible".
Revising the base text: Style and interpretation
As I went over the raw text of the WEB, I first and foremost compared it with the Hebrew throughout, and also made numerous stylistic changes. I often consulted the classic Jewish commentaries for their insights on the peshat level (the “plain sense” of the text). In many places I also compared it with my own favorite translations, namely the NJPS translation, the NRSV, and Robert Alter's new translation of the Torah. Often, when it seemed both feasible and tasteful, I adopted Alter's method of keeping the English word order in line with that of the Hebrew, but not always in the same way Alter did nor to the same extent.
In terms of copyright, I followed the reasonable approach of the WEB that any new translation offered freely to the public should be “different enough to avoid copyright infringement,” which means that “the wording is about as different from any one Modern English translation as the current translations differ from each other.”
There is a great deal of “theological translation” in the WEB, not all of it overtly Christological. For instance, the word “soul” is often used, even though that concept is difficult to justify as peshat in the Torah. It goes without saying that I have modified the translation in such places, as well as for all of the blatant Christological translations. One special example is in the translation of Genesis 4:1 in which I followed Rashi (“Now the man had known Eve his wife...”). Not too many people today know that the controversy about the meaning of the form of this verb was a major example of Jewish-Christian polemics in the middle ages (which was one motivation for Rashi's comment). The Jewish interpretation, influenced by the midrash and by the form of the verb, was that Eve conceived and gave birth while still in Eden, i.e. that marriage and parenthood are a part of an ideal world. (Cf. the similar verb form in 3:1; the serpent did not just then become the shrewdest of the wild beasts, but already was!)
Ultimately, all decisions regarding interpretation and style were my own, and anyone who prefers an alternative rendering or a different style is welcome to create a derivative translation.
Revising the base text: Technical changes
Besides larger matters of style and interpretation, specific technical changes made throughout to the raw base text include the following:
- The use of contractions has been abandoned. The author of the WEB justified the use of contractions based on the informal Greek of the Christian New Testament, but the Hebrew Bible is normally in elevated language.
- All of the footnotes that appear in the WEB have been removed. The vast majority have simply been deleted. Only in very rare cases where a very brief note truly contributes to both reading and understanding the Hebrew, such as the transliteration of the Hebrew as used in a word-play (e.g. Genesis 2:23), is it included within the text between square brackets.
- Pronouns referring to God are capitalized. This is a return to the KJV tradition (and to the style of many other excellent modern translations, as opposed to the ASV and the WEB which abandoned the KJV tradition in this case). The capital letters are a lovely traditional way of showing reverence.
- The four-letter divine name (written י·ה·ו·ה and usually pronounced as “Adonai”) is rendered as “the Lord”. This too is a return to the KJV tradition and to the style of the best modern translations (which was abandoned by the ASV and the WEB).
In terms of the divine name, the ASV proudly announced in 1901 that it would abandon a “Jewish superstition” by no longer rendering that name as “the Lord” and would instead use “Jehovah” (which was supposedly the “real” name of God). The WEB uses “Yahweh” (“the most probable best transliteration of this most holy proper name from the Hebrew consonants”), in a bolder move to supply a reconstructed vocalization where the masoretic Hebrew purposely did otherwise. The deep desire of the ASV and the WEB to use God's “real name” in an English translation seems to be rooted in evangelical theology, since the author of the WEB even declared it to be one of the major religious principles in his translation.
The KJV, on the other hand, showed great respect for the Jewish tradition to vocalize God's name in a way that means “Lord” as a sign of deep reverence. In the Hebrew, the same name is also occasionally vocalized in a way that means “God” in certain contexts (a distinction that is lost in the ASV and WEB translations). The JET translation uses two special templates in order to format these words in the same beautiful way as in most English translations that follow the KJV: Template:LORD and Template:GOD show the name as Lord and God, simultaneously indicating to the reader both the spelling of the name (the use of consonants indicates the four letters י·ה·ו·ה) and its masoretic vowelization (i.e. whether it is vocalized in a way meaning Lord or God).
Each verse begins with two small gray superscript numbers, created by using Template:Verse. The two numbers are the chapter number followed a colon and then the verse number.
There is no special sign (such a a large number) at the beginning of a chapter. Instead, there are titles for each new topic according to the logical division of the text, which doesn't always coincide with the chapter numbers.
For instance, the first narrative in Genesis is about the seven days of creation, and the second narrative is the story of the Garden of Eden. But the chapters cut up the text illogically: Chapter 1 of Genesis is the first six days of creation; chapter 2 is the seventh day plus the beginning of the Eden story; chapter 3 is the end of the Eden story. This is just one striking example of how the chapter divisions are so poor that they wreak havoc on people's ability to read the Torah clearly.
So instead of diving the text into chapters, in JET each true topic gets its own title in gray, a title which also appears in the table of contents at the top of the page (with hyperlinks). The title is always followed by the chapters and verses it contains in parenthesis for navigational purposes. For instance, at the beginning of Genesis the title "The Seven Days of Creation" is followed by "(1:1-2:3)"; click here to see how that example of a title looks inside JET.
The color gray always indicates elements which do not exist in the traditional Hebrew text. These include the chapter and verse numbers, as well as the new titles (such as "The Seven Days of Creation") which have been added here. (Though it must be pointed out that the titles are a more natural extension of the Hebrew text than the chapter numbers are.) Gray allows the eye to easily skip over the verse numbers and not be distracted by them.
In addition to the new titles and the table of contents which they appear in, as well as the chapter/verse numbers, further divisions have been added to the text. One of them is the "space dividers" found within the traditional Hebrew text, which usually indicate that a new topic begins (sort of like an indentation at the beginning of a new paragraph in a modern book). These "space dividers" are called parashot in Hebrew and there are two different kinds, which we here indicated using Template:PP and Template:PS. In the text they appear at the beginning of a line like this: {P} and {S} . (It would be better for these two templates to show the two Hebrew letters פ and ס, but this is currently impossible because the RTL orientation creates formatting errors on the page.)
The final section division added in JET is simply the division of the text into modern paragraphs, a phenomenon which doesn't exist in the original Hebrew but is important for readers of modern English. By paying attention to the signs {P} and {S} , the reader immediately knows which new paragraph has a basis in the original text (where a sign appears) and which doesn't (where no sign appears).
Hebrew-English Editions
While there are some excellent Jewish translations of the Bible into English, it must be admitted that doing translations is not really of central importance in Judaism. A committed Jew doesn't usually read a translation as if it were "the Bible" itself, but rather as an aid towards understanding the original Hebrew. This is because for Jews, it is the original Hebrew that is sung in the synagogue and woven into the prayer book.
That is why bilingual editions are so popular with Jews in the diaspora, and rightfully so. A bilingual edition is by its very nature more authentically Jewish for this reason than any stand-alone translation. I hope that along with expansion of modern Bible translations at the Open Siddur Project, these translations will also be incorporated into online bilingual editions in which the translation will parallel the original Hebrew in attractive and useful ways.
Conclusion
To conclude, I would like to emphasize that Parashat Bereshit is only an example. I do not plan to personally translate the Torah (much less the Tanakh), but in the future I will probably contribute various sections that I re-translate on my own for teaching purposes. More importantly, I would like to invite others to contribute further Open Content translations for parts of the Torah or Tanakh to the Open Siddur Project, whether by following my method or in any other style. In time, together we could create a rich resource full of translations of all parts of the Tanakh in a variety of useful forms. That would be a wonderful thing to start on Simḥat Torah.
In the meantime, see JET Parashat Bereshit.
Contributors
Raw text that may be modified towards use in JET
Explanation
The following are links to the raw texts of some books that have been automatically formatted for future editing by contributors. The raw text can be found at the edit pages for these links.
Please note that automatic conversion plus some technical manual changes have been done, but there has been absolutely no manual editing of the text itself. There are many mistakes that need to be corrected (some because of the automatic conversion), as well as editing the texts to conform with JET guidelines. No text should be posted to JET unless it has first been manually edited with care.
The following automatic and manual conversions have been done in the creation of the raw texts found above:
- Chapter and verse numbers have been automatically modified to fit Template:Verse, and spaces between the verse template and the verse itself have been removed.
- "Yahweh" >> "the {{Lord}}"
- The books of the Torah have been manually subdivided into weekly Torah readings (parashat ha-shavua). Spelling for the titles of the weekly parashot are based on the chart found here.
Raw Texts
Torah:
Nevi'im:
- JET Introduction/Raw text for Twelve Minor Prophets (this is currently the only book of Nevi'im "essentially finished" in the WEB)
Ketuvim:
Sources and external links
- JET was first announced at the Open Siddur Project. The announcement was based upon an early version of this introductory page, which has since been updated many times.
- An online version of the NJPS translation may be found here. (Currently unavailable, perhaps due to the sale of the Jewish Publication Society to the University of Nebraska Press. If so, then this is a powerful example of how online knowledge is vulnerable to copyright law and of why an Open Content license is so important.)
- An online version of the NRSV translation may be found here or here.
- The WEB translation may be found here (FAQ; status; copyright).
Introduction to JET
