The Big Picture
Close reading of the Bible
I said last time that we still had one important question to answer, which we would discuss in “the next post on Gen 1:1-5.” That “next post on Gen 1:1-5” will be on Tuesday, when we’ll finish our discussion of Gen 1:5; on Thursday we’ll take a moment to sum up what we’ve learned about the whole first day of creation (as presented in the first five verses of Genesis 1) through our extremely careful study of it.
Today, though, on the Sunday post that’s free for everyone to read, I want to zoom out for a moment, step back, and refresh your memory – and my own – about what’s going on here. First, why I chose Genesis 1 to start this project of close reading.
I once heard a great Jewish religious thinker, Arthur Green, say that he told his rabbinical students at Hebrew College to begin their prayers each day by reciting that day’s text from Genesis 1 (and for Saturday, of course, Genesis 2). So I began doing the same.
I noticed that the way creation occurred differed from day to day. Praying is not a good moment to stop for textual analysis, but before long I thought of another great Jewish scholar of the 20th century, Judah Goldin. He wrote this:
Translation begins the moment I discover that I’m not sure I understand the text I’m reading; the moment I begin to suspect that all I’m getting out of my reading or study is general impressions, a kind of smog of comprehension. … [If] I ask myself, Just what exactly is the text saying, and why is it saying it this way and not another? and I cannot answer the question cleanly—no self-bluff or deception—then I know I have no alternative. I must clear the atmosphere. I must begin to translate.1
I promised that this Substack would begin with a “new translation” of Genesis 1. But as you now understand, the translation was never meant to be the whole point of the blog. It was meant instead to help me read this chapter with extreme care. Bernard Lewis, the Middle East historian who was also a talented translator from many languages, once wrote:
One may believe one has achieved a full understanding of the meaning of a text, only to find, in the process of translation, that one’s understanding has serious gaps and even flaws.2
I have done this kind of careful reading with many texts in the course of teaching Biblical Hebrew at Penn for the last couple of decades. Close reading, over and over again, is invaluable for learning, and it is most natural in a language-learning format. But that is far from the only time it’s useful. The Talmud tells us [Chagigah 9b]: "One who studies a text 101 times cannot be compared to one who studied the text 100 times." This kind of intense, close reading never fails to show me more about a text than I previously knew.
Writing in this format is another important aspect of learning for me. When I was much younger, an older colleague asked me what my scholarly methodology was. I wish I had told him the answer I would now give to that question: reading, writing, and thinking. The historian Fritz Stern (Five Germanys I Have Known) cites a remark supposedly made by the mathematician Oswald Veblen: “How do I know what I think till I have written it down?” That double process of translating and writing is a wonderful way to focus the mind.
There’s one more thing I’d like to say, about this blog and about my work as a Bible scholar and a translator. I feel a tremendous responsibility to the original writers of any text I am trying to understand – most especially if I’m translating it and/or teaching it to others. Another talmudic statement [Yevamot 97a] tells us, “When a statement is made in the name of a departed scholar his lips move in the grave.” All these writers and commentators can no longer communicate unless I help them, and I’m trying to do that with as much care as I can.
Next time, we’ll discuss that final cliffhanger in Gen 1:5, one that is still resonating in today’s world.
“Reflections on Translation and Midrash,” Studies in Midrash and Related Literature, JPS. I owe the reference to David Stern, “Judah Goldin’s Literary Approach to Rabbinics.”
Notes on a Century, 23.