PHILOLOGOS:
From Hebrew to... Hebrew. The Bible, that is.
For a while now I’ve been hearing about a new translation of the Hebrew Bible, called Tanach Ram. (Tanakh, of course, is Hebrew for “Bible,” an acronym composed of Torah, the Five Books of Moses; Nevi’im, the Prophets, and K’tuvim, the other biblical writings, while Ram is the name of an Israeli publishing house.) What makes the Ram edition unusual is that it’s a translation, by Israeli educator Avraham Ahuvia, of the Hebrew Bible into — of all languages — Hebrew.
That is, it’s a translation into contemporary Israeli Hebrew. ...
My instinct is that speakers of Modern Hebrew should be able to read the Hebrew Bible comfortably with a reasonable sprinkling of annotations for archaic vocabulary, grammar, and usages, much like modern editions of Shakespeare for speakers of English. But, that said, if this project gets more Israelis to read the Hebrew Bible, it's okay with me. Philologos takes pretty much the same line:
There’s no doubt that the Bible is a more stirring and evocative book in ancient Hebrew than in this kind of modern rendition. But this doesn’t mean that modern Hebrew can’t be used as a bridge to biblical Hebrew, over which contemporary students can cross to one from the other. What matters is getting to the other side, not the vehicle by which one gets there.
