Intellectual Dishonesty and Word Games On the Part of Dr. Joel Hoffman

• The tenth Commandment, commonly but wrongly translated as "thou shalt not covet," illustrates how internal structure or etymology can be misleading. Like the English "host" and "hostile" that share a root but don't mean the same thing, the words for "desirable" and "take" in Hebrew come from the same root. It's the second word, "take," that appears in the Ten Commandments. But translators, not recognizing that related words can mean different things in this way, misunderstood the Hebrew and wrongly translated the text as "thou shalt not covet" for what should have been "thou shalt not take." (Learn more: "Thou shalt not covet?")

Dr. James Strong's carefully-compiled concordance can immediately challenge this:


"The KJV Old Testament Hebrew Lexicon

Strong's Number: 02530 Original Word Word Origin dmx a primitive root Transliterated Word TDNT Entry Chamad TWOT - 673 Phonetic Spelling Parts of Speech khaw-mad' Definition v to desire, covet, take pleasure in, delight in (Qal) to desire (Niphal) to be desirable (Piel) to delight greatly, desire greatly n f desirableness, preciousness King James Word Usage - Total: 21 desire 11, covet 4, delight 2, pleasant 1, beauty 1, lust 1, delectable things 1"

• The translation "Jubilee year" results from a mistaken application of cognates (similar words in different languages). In the original Hebrew, the year was called the "year of the horn," or, in Hebrew, "the year of the yovel." The Latin for yovel is iobileus, which just happens to sound like the Latin word iubileus, connected to the verb iubilare, "to celebrate." The English "Jubilee year" comes from the Latin. (A similar Latin coincidence gave rise to the notion that the fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple.)

This can be easily challenged by context. HaShanah l'Yovel was announced with the shofar on the 49th-counted Yom Kippur in the cycle, and it was a cause for celebration:


"'You are to count seven Shabbats of years, seven times seven years, that is, forty-nine years. 9 Then, on the tenth day of the seventh month, on Yom-Kippur, you are to sound a blast on the shofar; you are to sound the shofar all through your land; 10 and you are to consecrate the fiftieth year, proclaiming freedom throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It will be a yovel for you; you will return everyone to the land he owns, and everyone is to return to his family. 11 That fiftieth year will be a yovel for you; in that year you are not to sow, harvest what grows by itself or gather the grapes of untended vines; 12 because it is a yovel. It will be holy for you; whatever the fields produce will be food for all of you. 13 In this year of yovel, every one of you is to return to the land he owns. 14 "'If you sell anything to your neighbor or buy anything from him, neither of you is to exploit the other. 15 Rather, you are to take into account the number of years after the yovel when you buy land from your neighbor, and he is to sell to you according to the number of years crops will be raised. 16 If the number of years remaining is large, you will raise the price; if few years remain, you will lower it; because what he is really selling you is the number of crops to be produced. 17 Thus you are not to take advantage of each other, but you are to fear your God; for I am ADONAI your God...

• This is how the Hebrew in Isaiah 7:14 -- which describes a young woman giving birth to a boy who will be named Emmanuel -- ended up in Greek as a virgin giving birth. Though these facts about Greek and Hebrew are generally undisputed among scholars, the translation error remains, both because people are usually unwilling to give up familiar translations, and also perhaps because the Gospel of Matthew describes the virgin birth of Jesus by quoting the mistaken Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14.

In context, in Yesha'yahu 7:14, "almah" and its Greek equivalent absolutely referred to a betulah. Dr. David Stern further explains this in the Complete Jewish Bible translation.

• Metaphors are particularly difficult to translate, because words have different metaphoric meanings in different cultures. Shepherds in the Bible were symbols of might, ferocity and royalty, whereas now they generally represent peaceful guidance and oversight. So the image of the Lord as shepherd in Psalm 23 originally meant that the Lord was mighty, fierce and royal. The impact was roughly the same as "the Lord is a man of war." But in most English-speaking cultures, "the Lord is my shepherd" conveys a wholly different, and therefore inaccurate, image.

Actually, shepherds were considered low lifes, ishim-ha'aretz, such as was David ben Yishai, who surprisingly became the  melekh b'kiddush-- sanctified king-- of Yisra'el.

• Similarly, kinship terms like "father," "brother," "sister," etc. were used in the Bible specifically to indicate power structure. This is why the romantic Song of Solomon -- the Bible's only full length treatise on relationships -- says "my sister, my bride" or "my sister, my spouse." On its face, that English translation is not only unromantic but in fact felonious. The original point, however, was that the woman in this relationship should be the man's equal.

Here, Mr. Hoffman is obviously playing word and decontextualization games. She isn't literally his biological achoti, but she is a Shulamit achot. So, there is adultery but not a felony (as we think of felony, anyway.). Shlomo clearly took more than one wife and a goyah kallah.