Dominoes and Tight Ropes: Prescription vs. Description in Biblical Translation

This essay was written in the winter of 2022 for Diverse Rhetorics, a course taught by Dr. Sheila Carter-Tod. I worked on this essay for the entirety of my time taking the course, developing it, adding onto it, and drawing from other courses I was taking in the Judaic studies department to give it more depth. As we learned more about ancient Hebrew, I became fascinated with the way translation can be twisted to create a text that is unique from the source material.

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Mystic Jewish folklore traces the gateway for all evil in this world to the incorrect marking of a single letter in the Torah. Jews, and sometimes Christians, have been referred to as the “people of the book” on multiple occasions. God’s true name is traditionally censored on all records that will be destroyed, golems are activated through letters of the Hebrew alphabet written down on paper, amulets with the names of angels engraved on them serve as protection for the wearer, and Jewish children must learn to read and recite religious texts before they are considered a true Jewish adult. The importance of text and the interpretation of it is paramount to Judaism (or any other Abrahamic religion, for that matter) to the point that there are entire fields of education purely dedicated to forming philological methods to interpret bible passages. Knowing this importance highlights the translation of the original text and its meaning as something that is culturally relevant and can be manipulated by those in power.

Before Martin Luther’s German translation of the Bible, most commoners were unable to read it. This gave the church the opportunity to use the text for corrupt purposes. In the same vein, insidious mistranslation (or even unintentional bias) blinds the readers of religious texts to other possible interpretations. Like the mystic tale of the mismarked Hebrew letter, an artifact that must be translated to properly be introduced to a new culture has the potential to justify cultural beliefs that are already asserted in that society. The original Hebrew text of the Torah is one such artifact that has taken a different cultural meaning through its English counterpart. All the alternate interpretations and double meanings that can be found in the original text of the Torah seem to be nearly limitless compared to the linear and concrete nature of conventional Western Christianity today.

Genesis 2:22 is one such example of a passage with many potential meanings in its original form compared to its commonly known English translation. The original text from the Torah reads,

ויבן יהוה אלהים את הצלע אשר לקח מן האדם לאשה ויבאה אל האדם׃ (“way-yi-ben yahweh elohim et ha-tsela asher lakach min ha-adam la-issah wayvieha al ha-adam.”)

Most versions of the Bible translate this section to English assuming the word “tsela” means “rib.” The English Revised Standard Version of the Bible reads, “and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.” Understanding this translation, many assumptions can be made about the biblical creation of woman and her role as the property of a man. Here, Eve is understood to be created from a piece of Adam, her entire personhood existing as his property rather than an equal to him. This is the root of the religious justification for misogyny-- the perceived inferiority of, and expectance of servitude from, the woman exists because God created her from the property of man to give back to him.

Many debate this chosen translation. Rabbi Samuel bar Nachman, a contributor to the Bereishit Rabbah, a Talmudic-era midrash on the Book of Genesis, is one such adversary to the translation of “tsela” as “rib.” He understands the alternate translation of “tsela” as “side”, as shown in Bereishit Rabbah 8-- “They objected to him: But it says, ‘He took one of his ribs/ts’la`ot [Gn 2:21]!’ He said to them: ‘[It means] [one] of his sides/sit’rohi’, just as you would say, ‘And for the side/tsela` of the Tabernacle/ mishkan’, which they translate ‘for the side/seter.’”

This translation is supported by Exodus 25:12 when the word “tsela” is used to mean side, even being translated as such in all modern English versions of the Bible:

וְיָצַ֣קְתָּ לּ֗וֹ אַרְבַּע֙ טַבְּעֹ֣ת זָהָ֔ב וְנָ֣תַתָּ֔ה עַ֖ל אַרְבַּ֣ע פַּֽעֲמֹתָ֑יו וּשְׁתֵּ֣י טַבָּעֹ֗ת עַל־צַלְעוֹ֙ הָֽאֶחָ֔ת וּשְׁתֵּי֙ טַבָּעֹ֔ת עַל־צַלְע֖וֹ הַשֵּׁנִֽית : (“Yvyatzakta lo arba tabbe'ot zahav venatattah al arba pa'amotav ushetei tabba'ot al-tsel’a ha'echat ushetei tabba'ot al-tsel’a hashenit.”)

In the English Revised Standard Version of the Bible, this is directly translated as “You shall cast four rings of gold for it and put them on its four feet, two rings on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it.”

This interpretation means that Eve would have been split from one half of Adam rather than taken from a small piece of his anatomy. This can be supported by the Midrashic interpretation that Adam was originally created as a being that was both male and female. Genesis 1:27 is often translated to English as “male and female he created them”, referring to Adam. Knowing that “Adam” is not a proper name so much as a transliteration of the Hebrew word for “human/man”, we can understand Adam as the original human rather than the original man, who would encompass both the masculine and feminine. In this interpretation, he would later be split into both Adam and Eve, creating the two original opposite genders. Multiple rabbis, including Rabbi Nachman, support this interpretation as well, stating earlier in the same chapter of Bereishit Rabbah, “Said R’ Yirmiyah ben Elazar: In the hour when the Holy One created the first human, He created him [as] an androgyne/androginos, as it is said, ‘male and female He created them.’ Said R’ Shmuel bar Nachman: In the hour when the Holy One created the first human, He created [for] him a double-face/di-prosopon/ du-par’tsufin, and sawed him and made him backs, a back here and a back [t]here.”

This interpretation, which is backed and given validity by multiple religious figures during the Talmudic era, is almost completely alien to those who do not understand Hebrew. Changing how a single word is translated, in this case, “tsela”, creates a domino effect that shifts the perspective of the entirety of Genesis-- so much so, that the effects of how this single word has been translated has deeply rooted into the largest denominations of Western Christianity in a multitude of deeply connected and rooted ways.

It is essential to understand that the origin of misogyny is not rooted in Abrahamic religion. Rather, it would be misogyny that influenced its interpretation and translation, which would cycle back into a justification for prejudice. Biblical texts have been translated through the lens of the male living in a misogynist society-- internal biases influence the way a text is read while patriarchal institutions present common misconceptions, or a text that is able to be interpreted in multiple ways, as a single truth. An ambiguous source text combined with the deeply emotionally charged connection people have with religion and its traditions is a potent recipe for power and control. The interpretation that the woman was created from the rib of man (or any other interpretation of any biblical passage) is, therefore, regarded as an impenetrable fact that is immune to being disproven. This is reflected in many modern religious phenomena-- for example, many people today still believe the scientifically disproven idea that all men have a fewer number of ribs than women because of the English translation of Genesis 2:22.

Corruption in the church is historically rooted in ignorance. The Protestant Reformation is usually recalled in discussions of church corruption and misinterpretation of the Bible. The low literacy rates of the general population during this period are associated with the height of church corruption and prejudice. Similarly, religious prejudice today can be traced back in the disapproval of critical thinking and personal interpretation of biblical texts that do not fall in line with commonly held institutional beliefs combined with the simple fact that most of Western society is unable to read Hebrew. Even Hebrew speakers will find a lack of clarity in certain sections of the Torah-- many ancient Hebrew words in the Torah have no known accurate modern equivalent or definition.

Like any piece of literature, the Torah can be analyzed and interpreted in a multitude of ways. However, the deeply ingrained power of the white patriarchy in the West discourages these interpretations because they break the values that are, often arbitrarily, associated with the Western idea of Christianity. The vagueness of the original biblical Hebrew text opens a space between words and meaning that can then be filled with projection, which is inevitably culturally motivated. A problem arises when this projection becomes tradition and has the potential to feed into a cycle of oppression. As we can learn from the oddly prophetic Jewish folk tale emphasizing the importance of textuality, the mismarking of just one word has the potential to influence the rest of history.