so as I said before getting into Genesis itself the book and the text I want to start by thinking a little bit about the Bible more generally when we pick up a Bible what are we actually reading well unless you're an orthodox Jew and I I know that there's at least one in the room uh maybe more but unless you're an orthodox Jew you've always read the Bible in Translation I would guess whether it's at home or in church or in Sunday school wherever you've encountered the Bible in English potentially in Latin maybe in Greek
or other modern languages and You' probably thought as you read that you were reading the Bible but all translations are interpretations and they all involve choices uh choices that are more than just stylistic so as an example we're going to start actually Genesis 1 one uh so you should see on the screen uh four distinct translations from three major and one minor um Bible translation into English so the King James which is the one that I think most of us are probably familiar with off the top of our heads is in the beginning God created
the Heaven and the earth and the nrsv translation which you'll find in many many a church pew uh says in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth and the Jewish publication Society version which you'll find in most synagogues at least most reformed synagogues will say when God began to create Heaven and Earth and YT stands for Young's literal translation and I have it here just because it's so wacky in the beginning of God's preparing ing the heavens and the Earth okay four translations they're all a little bit different and what I want
to say about it is these translations the differences aren't really just in wording there's like major theological impact at stake in the way that these opening words of the Bible are translated is there creation ex nilo right out of nothing well in the King James the one we're familiar with there is in the beginning God created in the new Jewish publication Society translation when God began to create not so much creation out of nothing and this isn't like one of them is getting the grammar in the syntax of the Hebrew right and the other one
isn't translation uh isn't always a matter of onetoone Correspondence there's not always a correct answer so a choice is made and that choice is informed by the tradition behind the translation so the King James has creation ex niilo because the King James translators believed in creation ex niilo and the Jewish publication Society doesn't have that because Judaism doesn't believe that so the text that we use isn't the Bible right it's one specific rendering of the Bible
