Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
9
Recycled Tales
C
ENTURIES BEFORE
G
EORGE
S
MITH
discovered that the opening chapters of the Bible were re-
worked Babylonian tales, controversy over the authorship of the Bible centered on how to
interpret it as the literal word of God. The original Hebrew version had no vowels, leaving
room for interpretation as to the specific wording when the Bible was translated into Greek.
In 1538, the Jewish scholar Elijah ben Asher Levita demonstrated that the accents and points
indicating where to insert vowels, add punctuation, and divide Hebrew words were inven-
ted by rabbis long after the translation of the Jewish Bible. Before the adoption of modern
written Hebrew, the Jewish Bible consisted of a string of consonants. Meanings could vary
depending upon how one inserted the missing vowels and where one divided words. Bib-
lical translators like Saint Jerome had to use their judgment, which could introduce varying
shades of meaning and complicate literal interpretations. Concern over potential human in-
fluence and errors came to a head in 1650, when Louis Cappel, a French Calvinist professor
of biblical studies, painstakingly compared biblical translations in his massive
Critica Sacra
(
Sacred Criticism
) to demonstrate that the Bible was a topic with a history, rather than the
word of God delivered directly from the source.
Even before the Renaissance, it was well known that there were striking differences
between the Greek and Hebrew Bibles. Arguments over which Bible was the true word of
God led some scholars to argue that the Hebrew text was corrupt, or had even been inten-
tionally altered to deceive Christians. Others argued that the Greek Bible was a hodgepodge
of inferior translations, or that the Latin Bible was full of errors. This presented Christians
with the awkward challenge of which version to believe.
