As Kushner notes, the Bible occupies a large place in world culture. It is not only a source of moral guidance for many, but also, as she points out, “Some of the most politically charged issues of our times are rooted in biblical translation.”

Kushner grew up reading the Bible in Hebrew, and she was surprised by many differences in the Bible she encountered when first reading it in English. She therefore decided to study the history and content of various translations stemming from the ancient Hebrew, and she quotes from a number of them to compare and contrast verses she has selected to highlight. In this book, she picked out eight short passages for analysis on the themes of creation, love, laughter, man, God, law, song, and memory. Her observations are fascinating.

Her biggest surprise, she relates, is that the Bible in English is reported in just one voice, and is presented as definitive. By contrast, the text of the Jewish Bible is presented in a plurality of voices. Segments of ancient text are surrounded by commentary by rabbis throughout the ages, spanning at least twelve centuries, in different languages, scripts, and fonts: “The Hebrew text I grew up with is beautifully unruly, often ambiguous, multiple in meaning, and hard to pin down . . .” She writes of what she learned from this early education in scripture:

“Everything was up for discussion, and from my earliest memory I was taught to demand a second opinion, and a third, and a fourth, to cross borders of time and language in order to hear those multiple voices.”

Jewish tradition eschews certainty, teaching that the Bible is a document from which understanding must be created through the human activity of debate and consensus. Early Jewish sages viewed the lack of “pure” or “objective” truth as positive: one must come to faith by active intellectual engagement.

One of the most famous stories from Hebrew commentary dates from the 2nd century CE and is known as “The Oven of Akhnai.” A acrimonious debate takes place over the meaning of a law, and is solved by the recognition that God has created all of these disparate voices and philosophies, so one of them cannot necessarily be considered more legitimate than any other. Specifically, the text of the story reads: “[T]hese and these [both] are the words of the Living God.” The story teaches that “God entrusted the Torah [the first five books of the Hebrew Bible] to the sages to administer and interpret, and they must render decisions according to the legal process, namely the decision of the majority.” ("Encircling the Law: The Legal Boundaries of Rabbinic Judaism” by Chaya Halberstam, Jewish Studies Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4 (2009), pp. 396-424, online here.). But the Talmud replicates even rejected opinions, signaling they too are worthy of study. As the Jewish historian Gershom Sholem pointed out, "It is precisely the wealth of contradictions, of differing views, which is encompassed and unqualifiedly affirmed by [the Jewish] tradition." (Gershom Scholem, "Revelation and Tradition as Religious Categories in Judaism," 1971.]

Kushner tells us about one of the earliest Bible translations into English, the 1560 Geneva Bible. This Bible, that preceded the King James Version by 51 years, was the primary Bible of 16th-century English Protestantism. It was important for several reasons. It was the first time a mechanically-printed, mass-produced Bible was made available directly to the general public, and was used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, and John Knox among others. More significantly, it had a mix of text plus commentaries and marginalia, including verse citations that allowed the reader to cross-reference one verse with numerous relevant verses in the rest of the Bible. But subsequent political and religious conflicts resulted in a desire for a “definitive” text with meaning approved from the powers in charge.

This was not even possible with the early Hebrew Bible, because written vowels were only added to the text in the eighth century. Ancient Hebrew also has no periods, commas, semicolons, colons, exclamation marks, questions marks, or quotation marks. Certain verb forms look identical without vowels distinguishing them. Thus, for example, in the Ancient Hebrew Bible, the words for sight and fear look the same without vowels. The only way to figure it out, the author avers, is through context: “This is what so many of the rabbinic commentators try to provide - a map of how to read a verse within a neighborhood of other verses.” Importantly, that very verb shows up differently today in different translations, resulting in radically divergent meanings for passages.

There is also the matter of what happens to Hebrew idioms in translation, as well as Hebrew names. The Hebrew name for Eve, the author explains, is Chava, which means “life.” It is difficult, she writes, to see the link between “Eve” and “life” in translation. The same is true of many of the names in the Bible - they often represent physical reality and emotional destiny. In translation, however, the names are usually simply transliterated, so their original meaning is lost, as well as their metaphorical import. [Whether intentional or not, this change served to undermine the views of philosophers like Spinoza who saw the Bible as a work of "literature" rather than as "divine."]

Analogously, there are words that don’t carry the same meaning in English as they do in Hebrew. “Thou shalt not kill,” she notes, is actually “Thou shalt not murder” in Hebrew. “Killing” is justified in certain circumstances; “murder” is not.

Kushner explains many such discrepancies in this short but informative look at the perils of translation, especially with modern Bibles representing translations of translations. We would do well to keep in mind, she cautions, that all translation is interpretation. Language is not only about grammar and vocabulary, which can supply their own ambiguities. It is also about nuance and culture, values and perceptions, and local and contemporary references. [In our time, consider the word “welfare.” It may mean something positive to one group of interpreters, and something negative to another.] Context helps dispel misunderstandings, but the political agendas of translators may perpetuate them.

Evaluation: This book conveys so much that is intriguing and revelatory, one can only regret it is so short. And yet, from the amount of scholarship necessary just for the few passages Kushner analyzes, it is clear it would take years to add more. But for what she does include, it should not be missed. The book is hard to find, but worth the effort. ( )

Raised speaking Hebrew in a small Orthodox Jewish community 25 miles outside New York City, Aviya Kushner discussed the Bible regularly, studied it in school, at home and in synagogue, and knew her community's take on the stories and their meaning. When she first read the Bible in English translation for class at the Iowa Writers' Workshop as a young adult, she found herself repeatedly surprised at the difference in what was highlighted and what was lost in translation. Her teacher Marilynne Robinson, after reading her class essays, encouraged her to publish the reflections.

I found this collection of essays fascinating because it fits right into my favorite niches: an insider reflecting on religion, a deep dive into linguistics, Biblical over-reading and intertextuality, self-reflection and personal story, the ways in which context informs one's understanding. The overall effect definitely was one of personal essays from a poetry/literature class on the Bible (rather than a memoir, an academic take on Judaism or Biblical translation, or a devotional text), but it fully delivers on its value proposition. In particular, The Grammar of God makes plain that much of what is unremarkable and obvious to an observant Jew reading the Hebrew Bible in the context of a religious community is completely opaque to most people reading the Bible today.

Two particularly poignant reflections may give a sense for the way the book meanders through academic/intellectual reflection and basic memoir formats. Near the beginning, Kushner notes that the name "Adam" is grammatically tied to the Hebrew word for "earth", and that since the fall from Eden entails backbreaking labor in the earth, Hebrew readers see layers of metaphor that readers in translation cannot. On the other hand, near the end, she ties Isaiah 40:1-2 to her grandfather's personal struggle with faith following first losing his entire family in the Holocaust and then his wife to breast cancer at age 36, and her family's need to see where they came from. Both sections are very powerful, in completely different ways.

And of course, the book raises a few core and very tantalizing questions that Kushner cannot reasonably address: If you believe the Bible is the literal Word of God, how do you integrate that belief with not reading it in Biblical Hebrew? And then, if you read the Bible even in Biblical Hebrew but without the benefit of building on centuries of deep rabbinic thought, would you indeed come to similar conclusions as Kushner? (Personally, I suspect not; I recall a haftarah discussion of 1 Kings 1:1-31, in which others needed to call out what they were seeing very explicitly before I could see it too.)

This was a lovely book for its intended audience, but like most books on religion, probably holds no appeal for general audiences. ( )

This was a fascinating concept, and I liked the memoir approach. The overall arc and rationale for which Bible passages Kushner suggested still feel unclear. 3.5 stars. ( )

This is amazing scholarship and fascinating analysis. Aviya Kushner has spoken Hebrew since she could speak, with English as her second language, despite growing up in NY. As part of a devout Jewish family, reading the scriptures and debating and discussing them is second nature. So when she takes a class in grad school (with Marilynne Robinson, no less) on the Bible, she is utterly confused and surprised by the very different meaning it has in English from the Hebrew she is accustomed to. So begins an intense, but accessible comparison of the Hebrew meaning and its English counterpart, interwoven with memoir-like reflections of certain topics or biblical themes. She doesn't attempt to tackle the entire Old Testament -- she easily gets lost in a single line! but rather picks 8 topics to explore. She says: "My mother taught me that language is not simply words, it is an opening into a way of thinking, a view of the world, a naming of its neighborhoods." The nuances are really interesting and this books gives a whole new appreciation for the elasticity of language to convey meaning and the challenge of putting faith into words. ( )

This is an incredibly rich stew of stories and a glimpse into some of the differences between the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the Christian Bible as translated into English. Aviya Kushner, poet, teacher, and former journalist uses her family's habit of arguing about the meaning of Hebrew texts and her introduction to the Christian Bible in English, via a course taught by Marilynne Robinson, to highlight some of the key differences she sees between these texts. This is a deeply personal book, as well as one that gave this reader both a glimpse into how grammar and translation influence the meaning of texts, and the rich history of Jewish study and commentary of the Torah, prophets, and writings. ( )